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Have you ever wondered how fast reader you are? Maybe you are so fast that you even do not have to learn to speed read? What is your reading speed?

If you have thought about these questions then you have probably also thought about measuring your reading speed. How can it be tested and what should you do for that?

Fortunately, testing your reading speed is relatively easy. Reading speed is usually measured by WPM (words per minute). It indicates the number of words you read in one minute. For example 200 WPM means that you read 200 words in one minute, which about 3 words in one second.

For measuring your reading speed you will need a text and a stopwatch.

1. Select a text.
2. Count the number of words in the text
3. Read the text and measure time with your stopwatch.
4. Calculate your reading speed

So you will have to choose a text for testing your reading speed. You can choose both text from a paper for that purpose or you can read from the computer. The choice of the text will have an impact on your reading speed. If you choose a difficult text then your reading speed will be slower. Similarly, if you choose a longer text then you reading speed will be somewhat slower. It is logical as if you choose to run a mile then your average speed will be slower in comparison to running 100 yards.

Usually reading speed is tested with ordinary types of text. It means that the content is not too difficult. So, technical and scientific texts are not used. I would recommend you to use an article from a newspaper for testing your reading speed.

After reading the text you have to count the number of words in the text. You will have to do it manually if you are reading a text on paper. But if you are reading an electronic text then you may use your word process for word count.

Measuring your reading speed is not an exact science and therefore it is not that important that you will count the exact number of words. It does not make so big difference if there are 780 or 796 words in the text. So you can calculate the approximate number of words as follows:

1. Count the number of lines in the text.
2. Count the number of words per line. Choose an average line for that where the number of words in that line is typical for that text. So do not choose a line where there are very long words in it.
3. Multiply the number of lines by number of words per line.

Now start the stopwatch and read the text from the beginning to the end. If you read the end of the text then stop the stopwatch and see what the time is.

Calculate your reading speed by dividing the number of words in the text by your reading time. For example if you complete a 750 word text in 3 minutes then your reading speed will be 250 WPM. Note that the time is measured in minutes and minutes should be treated as decimal here. So if you read a text for 3 minutes and 15 seconds, then it is 3.25 minutes.

The average reading speed is for an average text written in English is about 180-250 WPM. If you get more than 350 WPM then you will be doing really well. Speed readers read at 500 WPM and faster. Top class speed readers can even reach above 1000 WPM.

No matter how fast your reading speed is, there will be always room for improvement. Even if you are reading at 1200 WPM then it is possible to increase it to 1250 or 1300 WPM when practicing speed reading.

Besides reading speed comprehension is also vital. There is no point in super fast reading if you don not understand or remember the text you read. Reading comprehension is measured in the percentage of the text you can recall. 100% comprehension means that you can fully recall the text.

Reading comprehension is usually measured by answering to the questions about the content of text after completing the reading. For that you will need questions about the text. If you are doing it with your own text then you may let your friend to prepare questions about the content of the text. After completing the text then you will answer to these questions. Reading comprehension will be measure by the percentage of correct answers.

As it is troublesome to do so, then I will recommend you to choose an online speed reading test. In that case the questions for testing comprehension are already there and you do not need a friend to help you. There are many tests out there in the internet and you may try out several of them. Be sure that the test includes also the comprehension test. Sadly it is often not the case. If you want to be sure that you can test both your reading speed and comprehension and get an evaluation about your present level of reading speed then you can use this free speed reading test.

In many cases achieving 100% comprehension is not necessary. Our job tasks often require finding information from many sources or getting the central idea of the material. We do not have to remember all the details. In case of speed reading 70% comprehension can be regarded as satisfactory.

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An average person, who has not learned speed reading techniques, is able to read at 200-250 words per minute. You can test yourself here  in order to find out your own reading speed. By learning to speed read most people are able to at least double their reading speed if they practice regularly. Regular practice means that they perform speed reading exercises every day for at least one month. There is no need to spend several hours on it each day. 45 minutes per day will do, but it has to be regular.

A typical office worker will spend about 25% of his/her working time on reading. In case of a standard 8 hour work day it is 2 hours. If you double your reading speed then it allows you to save one hour each day. If you triple your reading speed then you will save one hour and twenty minutes. So if you are reading initially at 250 words per minute, then increasing your reading speed to 500 words per minute gives you a huge gain, but taking your speed up to 750 words per minute does not help you that much.

The best speed readers can read at speeds above 1000 words per minute. Reaching so fast speeds takes a great deal of practice, but the practical value of reading so fast is not so striking.

Doubling your initial reading speed will give you the biggest efficiency gains and it can be achieved by sensible amount of practice. Being a super-fast reader may be effective and you can impress your friends with it but if you have to work very hard for it then there is actually no necessity for that. So getting the basics of speed reading and putting it into practice will be enough for us.

Speed reading it self is not a goal, it is only a means to being more productive in mental work. To be a productive worker, being able to read fast is not enough. If your time management skills are poor, if you are procrastinating and wasting your working time then it will not help you much if can read very fast. Although rushing through your papers at 1000 words per minute, can save you valuable minutes, but if your coffee brakes are half an hour long or you waste your working time surfing internet then at the end of the day will not end up with that much work being done

So, I would recommend you to be sensible with speed reading. What you need to do is to learn speed reading techniques, practice them and apply to your job-related reading. Do not go crazy about speed reading, but practice it regularly. If you do so you will get the most from it with sensible effort.

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In order to promote speed reading and to find out who are the fastest readers in the world several international top level speed reading contests are being held. Still, these events have not received much media broadcast and are practically unknown to most people.

Speed reading contests are included in the MEMORIAD event, which is also known as world mental calculation, memory & photographic reading Olympiad. MEMORIAD takes place every four years internationally in parallel to Olympic Games. There are nine different events in the MEMORIAD and speed reading is one of them. The previous MEMORIAD event wad held on 01-02 November 2008 in Istanbul. The winner of the event received a gold medal and $1,500 prize money.

Speed reading contest is also included in the Mind Sports Olympiad, which has been held since 1997. The speed reading event of this Olympiad is often referred also as Speed Reading World Championships. This year the Mind Sports Olympiad will be held from 21st to 31st August 2009 in London.

Anne Jones is the most successful competitor in the world championship event as she has won it six times. She is also recognized as the holder of the speed reading world record as in 2007 she read “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” at Borders, Charing Cross Road, London in a record breaking 47 minutes and one second – 4251 words per minute. She then reviewed the book for the Independent and also for Sky TV. In many cases, she has crushed the opposition by an impressive margin. For example on 2003 world championship event she was more the twice faster than Andrew Havery, who received the second place.

Is she the fastest reader in the world? Actually it will be difficult to say so as probably many top class speed readers do not participate in these competitions. The reading speed of some competitors has been relatively poor in these events. You can find the results of some events here http://www.lecturerapide.info/championship.doc

Do you want to now how would you could do at the Speed Reading World Championships? Before you can try it out in August in London I have now a speed reading test for you. You can test your reading speed and comprehension on my website now.

http://www.startspeedreading.com/online-speed-reading-test/

Give it a try and you can later compare your result with the Speed Reading World Championships results.

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Have you ever wondered how fast can you read? What is the level of your present reading speed? Now you have a possibility to find it out as I have included an on-line speed reading test to my website. It will take only a few minutes to measure your current reading speed. The test will also measure your reading comprehension. After completing then you will see how many words per minute you can read. An average reader can read at 180-250 words per minute. How fast are you? You can find it out here.

http://www.startspeedreading.com/online-speed-reading-test/

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